When People Disappear In Yellowstone National Park, Some Are Never Found

Dan Campbell was illegally hunting elk antler sheds in Yellowstone Park when he disappeared more than three decades ago.

Campbell had set off from Hellroaring Trailhead to Jardine, Montana, outside of the park's boundaries, with his dog Freckles for a four-day trek.

However, when the 42-year-old Montana man failed to appear at the designated location and time, his girlfriend, Tracy Erb, reported him missing April 8, 1991.

Campbell is one of at least six people to mysteriously disappear in the park since the late 1960s.

There may be more, but it’s difficult to get a handle on the numbers.

Officially, the park doesn’t appear to track the missing. When asked for a list of missing people, the Yellowstone Park Public Affairs Office referred Cowboy State Daily to the national park’s cold case database containing 25 missing persons cold cases for all national parks.

Campbell was the only person cited on the list to have gone missing in Yellowstone. Of the others, nine went missing in Yosemite State National Park in California while five disappeared in Grand Canyon National Park.

The other five missing persons who disappeared in Yellowstone were culled from the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation’s missing person database and the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs).

Along with Campbell, those never found include Luke Sanburg, Bruce Pike, Stuart Isaac, Kim Cumbo and 8-year-old Dennis Johnson, all of whom disappeared in the park between 1966 and 2021.

‘Bastard’ Search

Campbell’s disappearance serves as an example of the challenges faced when trying to unravel the enigma of a person gone missing in Yellowstone. It also sheds light on the struggles that park rangers and search and rescue teams face in their efforts to locate individuals within the vast 2.2-million-acre park.

An incident report released by the U.S. Department of Interior gives insight into how the search unfolded for Campbell, beginning with gathering additional information about him and determining if he was actually missing in what’s called a “bastard search.”

In search and rescue terms, a "bastard" search refers to checking all the obvious locations to make sure the supposed victim isn’t sitting at home watching baseball and snacking on chips. The derogatory term, hence, describes that person who is hiding out and not missing.

Once it was established that Campbell was indeed missing, the park dispatched ground and air crews. Spring snowstorms with up to a foot of snow slowed searchers on their weeks-long search of seven areas in the park. They found no trace of Campbell or his dog.

Warring Theories

In the absence of answers, speculation abounded. Some said Campbell may have intentionally disappeared to avoid paying debts while others surmised that he thumbed a ride out of the park, fell into a hole or had a run in with a grizzly.

His family, however, believes Campbell was likely killed by rival hunters in the corrupt, yet highly profitable, underground shed hunting market that continues to thrive today.

Shed hunting is a popular pastime in Wyoming and elsewhere whereby collectors gather shed antlers from deer, elk and moose on public lands in the spring. Shed antlers have become popular for home décor, arts and crafts and can sell for $15 or more per pound for each antler.

It’s illegal to collect sheds in Yellowstone and other national parks, but it remains a lucrative market for poachers.

A 1996 article in Outside Magazine outlines the “infamous antler wars” between poachers, rangers and each other in which the author describes how the lucrative industry has spiraled into small cartels carving up park territory and guarding it with semiautomatic weapons.

Campbell’s brother Bill, likewise, did his own investigation and told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle that there had been 14 horn hunters out in the area the day Campbell went missing and that one of them heard two shots fired.

The Campbell family hired a private investigator, according to documents released by the U.S. Department of Interior in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Bozeman newspaper, and the Montana Criminal Investigation Bureau were also called in to help that July.

Law enforcement, however, didn’t seem to consider homicide a possibility, prompting Campbell’s three brothers to sue former Park County Montana Sheriff Charlie Johnson for $100,000 each for legal fees and associated hardships for what they claimed was a botched investigation.

At the heart of the lawsuit was the fact that during the course of his investigation, the sheriff confiscated – but later returned equipment – belonging to two horn hunters who were legally camping outside of the park's northern boundaries. Sheriff’s officers collected ammunition and spent cartridges but did not subject them to forensic tests, according to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

This prevented them from getting fingerprints or doing other evidentiary analysis to determine if they had any involvement, the brothers stated in their lawsuit, which was later thrown out of court.

Regardless of how or why he disappeared, no signs of Campbell’s body and that of his dog have ever turned up never been located all these years later. The case remains open.

Car Crashes, Heart Attacks Top The List

Apart from getting lost or criminal activity, there are many ways for people to disappear in the park.

In his book, “Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park,” attorney and longtime Yellowstone tour guide and park ranger Lee H. Whittlesey outlines the ways in which people have been hurt or killed in Yellowstone.

To date, there have been 52 deaths in the park, according to a 2022 survey by Outforia, a nature and outdoor resource, which does not specify when the deaths occurred. The most common cause of death in the park, according to the survey, is a tie at 12 each for motor vehicle crashes and heart attacks.

The second most common cause of death is a tie between falling and a category simply classified as “undetermined” causes. Both have resulted in seven deaths each, followed by drownings that accounted for five deaths.

Accordingly, between 2018 and 2020, Yellowstone ranked fourth of all national parks for the greatest number of search and rescues between 2018 and 2020 at 371, according to Outforia. Grand Teton National Park ranked eighth with 224 search and rescues during that same period.

Odds Are Slim Of Disappearing

Former park ranger Richard Jones puts no stock in what he calls “click bait” surveys that emphasize the dangers of dying or disappearing in Yellowstone or any other national park.

Jones is the son of a former Yellowstone ranger who spent five years of his life as a boy living in the park during the 1950s at a time where bears roamed freely prior to the park implementing its bear management plan.

He started his career as a ranger in national parks in New Mexico, the Virgin Islands and Big Horn Canyon National Recreational Area and also worked in law enforcement. During his tenure as a ranger, he specialized in cave rescues and participated in hundreds of searches for people – all of whom were found.

The odds are slim of disappearing in Yellowstone given the number of people who pass through the park each year, according to Jones.

In 2023, Yellowstone had 4.5 million visitors. Multiply this by yearly visitors to the 62 other national parks and the fact that there’s only 25 reported missing persons cold cases to date is testament to the rarity of vanishing at a national park.

In cases where a person is reported missing, they are almost always found.

However, deaths do happen and people do disappear.

Bodies disappear

In Jones’ experience, many of those cases involve missing people who wander off, get lost, fall off cliffs or have a medical emergency that renders them incapacitated and vulnerable to the elements.

In some instances, people deliberately go into the woods to commit suicide by falling into a raging river or scalding geyser. One such case was Il Hun Ro, a tourist from Los Angeles, whose foot and shoe were found bobbing on the surface of the Abyss Pool in August 2022.

In rare instances, missing people might get attacked by an animal, but very rarely is foul play involved, Jones said. Committing murder in a park is a lot harder than other places, he added.

“Accidents happen, but I think criminal activity is probably exceedingly, exceedingly rare,” he said, noting there are typically 700 successful missing person searches and rescues in national parks each year.

It’s also difficult to state with full certainty that some of the missing are dead because their remains are not likely to be left undisturbed by wildlife roaming the park.

However, if a person does die, it’s likely their remains will never be found. Due to the number of animals roaming the park, bodies do not stay undeterred for long, he said.

“If you die off in this part of the country, your body is not to going to stay around long,” he said. “There’s going to be bears, wolves, coyotes and foxes … within a week, there’s not going to be much evidence left of the body.”

Though visitors may befall dangers in state and national parks, Jones said he thinks they are still much safer than in urban parks and cities.

The biggest danger to tourists visiting Yellowstone and other national parks in his estimation are the bison, which people tend to underestimate.

“They’re like cows and not terribly afraid of people, but they have their own spatial distance,” he said. “You get too close, they might whack you, and you can’t get whacked by a 2000-pound animal without getting hurt.”

Swept Downstream

Of particular danger, Jones said, is anyone who falls into the river and gets swept downstream as in the cases of three of the people currently listed as missing whose bodies have never been recovered.

Luke Sanburg disappeared after he was swept downstream in the Yellowstone River on June 24, 2005. The 13-year-old and his Boy Scout troop had been pushing logs into the river when one hit him and shoved him into the 50-degree water, according to reporting by the Associated Press.

The river conditions were “unswimmable,” incident commander Tim Reid told the family.

Despite a rigorous three-day investigation along the 14-mile span of river, Sanburg's body was never found. The only clue: A set of shoes believed to be his were found in the area.

Nicholas Mostert, 20, of Salt Lake City, is another missing person presumed to have drowned. Several people witnessed him jumping into the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River from an observation deck 308 feet above on June 16, 2009, in what appeared to be a deliberate act of suicide.

He was swept over the waterfall into a raging river roiling with nearly 6,000 cubic feet of flowing water per second, according to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. He was never found despite a helicopter and ground search.

Kim Crumbo is Yellowstone’s latest missing persons case in which investigators suspect drowning. The 74-year-old Ogden, Utah, man was camping with his half-brother Mark O’Neill in September 2021 when he disappeared. Meanwhile, O’Neill’s body was found on the east shore of Shoshone Lake.

An autopsy determined he’d died of hypothermia. Despite extensive searching, Crumbo, a former U.S. Navy Seal, has never been found.

Biggest Search In Park History

The youngest person to disappear in Yellowstone is 8-year-old Dennis Johnson, who was reported missing April 12, 1966.

Johnson and his family had been visiting the park from Inyokern, Calif. They stopped in the Cascade picnic area near Canyon Village for lunch, when the boy’s seven-year-old sister wandered off.

Johnson, and his dad, William, headed off in different directions to find the girl. William quickly located her, but his son never returned from the woods.

Searchers scoured a 100-square mile radius around where the boy was last seen but didn’t find any traces of him or other signs of danger.

Whittlesey discusses this search in his book and said it was one of the most intensive searches in Yellowstone history. The park spent thousands of man hours in searching for Johnson by ground, air and with dogs for three weeks.

Whittlesey, the former ranger and attorney, wrote in his book that Johnson’s brother told park officials that he thought they’d done everything possible to find him.

Later, the family would hire a psychic to divine the teen’s whereabouts, Whittlesey reported. The psychic divined that the boy had drowned in a shallow ditch near the location he was last seen or had fallen into a canyon, according to Whittlesey.

In 58 years, no trace of Johnson has ever been found.

Abandoned Vehicles

Just as puzzlingly are people like Bruce Parker Pike, who is perhaps the least known missing person of the six who are believed to be dead. His disappearance in early August 2006 does not appear to have been publicized by the media or recorded in the park’s news releases.

All that is known is that the 47-year-old Texas man was last seen in the Indian Creek campground. His abandoned vehicle was all searchers found and impounded, according to the DCI missing person database.

Four years later, a second abandoned vehicle was found Sept. 26, 2010, abandoned along Grand Loop Road, which links Old Faithful and West Thumb. The keys were still in the unlocked Lexus, but its driver, 48-year-old, Stuart Isaac, of Burtonsville, Maryland, was nowhere to be found.

Isaac’s entire trip to Yellowstone is shrouded in mystery. Prior to leaving home on Sept. 6, he left a note for his family letting them know he was going on a cross-country trip, according to the Charley Project, a website dedicated to missing person cold cases.

There are no hiking trails in the area where his car was found, nor does he have any outdoors experience hiking or camping.

The last person to speak to Isaac was a high school friend. Isaac had called her two days prior to disappearing. The two spoke for two hours, which she found odd as the pair rarely talked on the phone and instead emailed or texted.

An extensive search turned up no sign of Isaac, and to date, his remains have not been found.

Hard To Find Missing People

Kevin Grange has been on multiple missing persons searches in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national park. The full-time firefighter and paramedic is the author of the soon-to-be-released book, “Grizzly Confidential: An Astounding Journey Into the Secret Life of North America’s Most Fearsome Predator,” and other titles.

Grange spent two summers as a seasonal paramedic in Yellowstone and three in Grand Teton from 2019 to 2021, where he participated in the search for Cian McLaughlin, who disappeared while hiking in Grand Teton in 2021.

Most of the people were found alive or injured, but in two cases, searchers determined that one person had died of suicide and the other was fatally mauled by a bear.

That said, he noted that grizzly attacks are rare, particularly predatory attacks in campgrounds, but when they do happen, they always make the news.

A person’s chance of being attacked by a bear in a park’s developed areas such as on boardwalks or roadside is currently one in 61.5 million visits, according to a 2019 Yellowstone Bear Project Annual report. The risk to road-side campers is one in 27.2 million during overnight stays and one in 1.7 million for backcountry campers, per the report.

Nonetheless, trying to find a lost person in the park is incredibly difficult, Grange said, noting that in some instances, people may not want to be found.

“Given the large search area in national parks and the environment, it’s extremely difficult to locate a missing person,” he told Cowboy State Daily in an email.

He described such searches as a “all-hands-on-deck effort” led by law enforcement, park rangers, Teton County Search and Rescue, park staff and volunteers. As a paramedic, he stayed in the ambulance and was not actively involved in the ground searches but surveyed from the road.

He suggested that people protect themselves in the park by bringing essentials like extra clothes, food and a headlamp among other items and also leave an itinerary with family or friends or in their vehicle to give search and rescuers so they have an idea of where to search.

Grange also suggested people take a charged cellphone or GPS locator device, and if they do get lost, to activate the GPS and head for open areas where they can be seen from overhead.

Anyone with information about any of these missing people is asked to contact the National Park Investigative Services at 888-653-0009 or submit an anonymous tip on its website.

Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.